What do you need a tractor for?

 

Bienvenu mon amis,

 

It’s been ages since I’ve written anything, no I’m not slacking, we’ve been tres occupé! That’s very busy, for you English speaking natives.

Simon’s been working himself into the ground so, with not too much encouragement, he decided that he would quite like a KTM EXC 250, otherwise known as an Enduro bike.  He duly brought it home, gave it a complete overall, wash and polish and then leapt into the correct attire for hurtling about in the woods and zoomed off!

He did offer me a backie, but I demurred…

 

In the meantime, we had more visitors arrive in the form of Libby, Taylor and Rhys. Hooray, free labour!

Libby wasn’t very building site ready and had better things to do than mix sand and cement.

As you can see, Didoo, next-door’s-dog, is still showing up for scraps. In fact, she’s very punctual and usually arrives around tea-time every day to see what’s on the menu. Chicken is her favourite.

Simon gave Taylor some impromptu tractor driving lessons, he’ll be wearing overalls and a straw hat in no time.

Anyway, we’d fed and watered them for a few days, but work was tapping Simon on the shoulder and so the first job was the dismantling of the turret.

When I first saw the turret, I was clearly wearing spectacles of a rose-tinted hue. Thoughts of Rapunzel were foremost in my mind, gorgeous hair, handsome princes, romance…

This would be more like it…

So, we decided, that actually, as it was a little tower of trash, we would knock it down.

Klaus came in handy, again.

So, with the ‘turret’ off, we discovered, a pile of bricks, lots of concrete but best of all an old wagon wheel! Probably belonged to the cart that pulled the harrow we found in arsehole corner!

When all the heavy lifting was done, we were left with this…

We had thought that we would be able to take the wall down and have a path from the front garden through to the back, but the floor level on the front was much higher. The building crew decided that rebuilding the wall would look better, and with the magic of sweat, a pick axe and some mortar we now have a cute wall, ready for some pots of geraniums next year.

While the boys were flexing their muscles, I’d been chatting to Libby about the kitchen door. Not a very interesting subject usually but it’s very quiet here.

Joking aside, Simon had informed me that the kitchen through to the utility room door was the only door in the entire house that actually fitted properly in the frame. It closed, locked and generally behaved like a door’s supposed to.

“Great” I said, “but it’s very boring to look at and currently painted an unbecoming beige colour.” I wheedled and whined for 5 minutes about how hideous it was but he was adamant that it had to stay, (I think he’s still scarred from the en suite door debacle).

I know, I thought, Pinterest is my friend. Doors…doors…doors…!

 

What was I thinking! I had a bona fide artist in the house, she can’t sit around playing with next-door’s-dog all day. Put her to work.

I know what you’re thinking, she’s lost her touch, hang on.

A couple of coats of blackboard paint later, some chalk pens and a touch of artistic genius and voilà!

Fantastique! We now have a quirky chalkboard sign-written door in the kitchen, which will go with the décor when it’s all done and Libby is in demand to do one for the Café de Noisette!

The following day a lorry showed up in the hamlet with an exciting delivery! Our pellet boiler had finally arrived. This will be the source of all our heating and the reason I won’t have to go to bed in December with socks on.

The driver lowered his tail-lift and wheeled the 300kg boiler off with his handy pallet truck into the garden. Au revoir he waved as he sped off.

Now we had the tricky conundrum of how to get it into the boiler house.

When in doubt, call in Klaus and Simon, the A Team…

First Simon had to remove the balustrade from the boiler room steps.

Then obviously, another mad invention was called for, technically known as a jib. A piece of wood was attached to Klaus’ forks and we lifted the boiler slightly to make sure its weight was central and then with the aid of Taylor acting as banksman (it made me cry last time with the rocks) and a tag line Simon manoeuvred it into the boiler room.

Have you ever seen anyone looked so pleased with a boiler?

Personally, I think it’s come from The Wizarding World…I’m expecting Dementors to show up…

After working their fingers to the bone, we had to send the kids back off to Blighty…don’t worry, there’ll still be plenty for them to do when they come back.

 

No peace for the wicked, next job on the agenda was our bedroom’s rear window. It was crusty and old, also painted in the aforementioned beige. Time for it to go!

Par for the course, dust, rubble and an old wasp’s nest awaited us, but we’re used to that now.

In no time at all, Simon had wrangled the new frame and window into place.

 

Solid wooden frame, without piles of filler, and double-glazed!

Needless to say, he was on a roll and so the tiny landing windows were next on the list.

These were replaced without too much fuss(!) And so, feeling buoyant with success, Simon announced that he was going to make shutters or as the French call them ‘volets’.

All I will say is, swearing ensued in large and very loud amounts. Really, it’s not as if he didn’t know the house wasn’t square, meaning neither are the window apertures. I’ll just show you the progress pictorially, it’s less offensive.

Something must have measured right at this point, he’s smiling.

Take note of the red tape measure. It is no more. After realising the end was wonky and his measurements had gone askew, he threw it as hard as he could against the house, failing to smash it the first time he repeated the process until it resembled an unwound clock spring.

A new tape was found and peace once more reigned in the hamlet.

Shutters fitted and looking resplendent.

Now we just had to take them down again so I could paint them. I know it seems an arse about face way of doing it but we had to make sure they fitted and closed properly.

I won’t bore you with painting tales, here they are, in place and finished. At least for the back of the house, he’s got to make three more for the front later…

Meanwhile, the pumpkins are growing at an alarming rate…

The bottle, a 50cl size, is there for comparison, I have realised they prefer the hose pipe.

 

Luckily for us we had, in the form of an invite from friends, a little two-day break!

We set off to the Charente, another beautiful part of France, the journey took us around 3 hours and it was incredible how much the terrain and buildings changed. It’s much dryer and flatter there, without the rolling hills and forests that we’ve gotten used to, and the stone houses are made of a more yellow coloured stone, similar to the Cotswolds.

This is a pretty little town called Verteuil-sur-Charente.

We had a lovely couple of days, I even had time to read a whole book! But alas, loitering around on a sunbed is obviously not my fate. We left our friends, armed with their mini-digger on a trailer and hauled ourselves back to La Creuse. Digging will commence shortly I presume.

But before the footings can be excavated for the extension, we had to make the window in the would-be kitchen, into a door.

Here’s an indoor view.

And an outdoor one.

Hammering and clattering our way into the stone work and we suddenly had a hole.

Once most of the stones were out there was only a stubborn bit of concrete left in our way. Not for long, Klaus came in handy again and out it popped.

Just the massively heavy stone sill stone to shift now.

 

Simon had another ingenious plan in mind. With Klaus’ help he drove the tractor forks in and under the stone.

He then managed to get a strop around the stone and tie that to the forks.

With the help of a lever hoist he ratcheted the handle until the stone literally popped out onto the forks.

He just had to remove the window and the internal tiles and fit a new door…pfft! Easy as pie!

Oh yeah, and make a threshold and chop out a few stones so the frame would go in, but he’s an old pro at that now.

A trip to our local (70km) Bricodepot to pick up a door and we were ready to fit it.

There is a tale in itself to tell about this trip. We ordered the door on line just to be sure that they had the correct size in stock.

“Hooray” I yelled “They’ve got one left, I’ve just bought it, we can pick it up in 2 hours”

We arrived in Montlucon, receipt clutched in our grubby hands, and proceeded to the customer service desk.

“Bonjour” I said in my best accent “J’ai commandé cette porte en ligne.” (Admit it, you’re impressed, aren’t you?)

The very helpful lady replied, very quickly, and I managed to understand that there was a pick-up point outside the store.

I relayed this information to Simon.

“I’ve never seen anywhere outside” he said, and strode off in the direction of the window/door counter, inside the shop. Oh dear.

There was also a very helpful young man at the window/door counter. I showed him my order and, with special chariot in hand, marched off into the storeroom to find our door.

He returned, with our door, and said, in quite good English,

“You are lucky, this is the last one”

“Merci beaucoup” we replied, and purposefully we went to the payment desk to pay for some other bits and bobs we had picked up.

At the cashier’s counter however, confusion reigned supreme, and not just because our French isn’t that great yet. I showed the cashier our receipt, indicating that we had already paid on line for the door. She acknowledged this, but something was clearly amiss. She asked us to push our trolley to one side and dashed off to find the customer services’ lady. You know, the one who had already told me to pick the door up from the pick-up point outside.

The cashier returned with the lady who, despite I’m sure, thinking we were absolute raving idiots, continued to be polite and explained that we had to return the door to the window/door counter and then go to the pick-up point outside to collect the door. The self-same one we had just picked up.

Simon was muttering expletives under his breath at this point, thank heavens for masks!

We were greeted at the counter by yet another helpful and quite jolly Frenchman who took our entire trolley off of us and wandered off in the direction of the pick-up point.

We dashed out of the store, got in the truck and drove about 20ft to the pick-up door. I pressed the buzzer with anticipation…

Ta da! The door opened, and there was our door. But not any of our other stuff. I’m glad Simon has not discovered the art of swearing in French.

Door loaded into the car I quickly told Simon I would go back in to find out where our other things were. The jolly Frenchman couldn’t have been more helpful. He had taken our trolley to the cashier for us, a simple transaction to pay and I was outside pushing the trolley to a silently fuming Simon.

I said nothing as I got into the truck. Nobody likes an ‘I told you so’.

Simon’s sulk evaporated on the way home and without too much kerfuffle we fitted the door.

It’s not wonky, I was in a hurry, Didoo had shown up and was in need of some chicken.

And some chicken she certainly had.